ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the 'otherness' of lustful states of mind. This otherness as a self-state, the subjectivity of which is constituted by and through a cluster of various affects, images, desires, fantasies, and behaviors that form the experience of lust. In contrast, lust's otherness is frequently constituted from psychic experiences that are not only inconsistent but are also in conflict with whom we imagine ourselves to be. Lustful states of mind reflect a range of intense, sometimes contradictory experiences like those Bentley describes: transcendence, debasement, and the paradoxical mixture of the two. In contrast to lustful experience, what one identify as love is more usually experienced as coming from a familiar or 'core' part of the self. In both cultural and psychoanalytic discourse, it is the established couple that domesticates lust, making sex healthy and good. Ageism, too, is rampant in cultural signifiers about love and sex.
